Why You Still Need To Care About The French Elections

Nevertheless, voter turnout has hit a historic low with abstention in the first round reaching 51.6 percent, according to French Interior Ministry data.

If no candidate manages to achieve that target, then all candidates who won at least 12.5% of registered voters go to the second round, where the victor will advance to Parliament.

The measures follow the scandal that destroyed the presidential bid of Republicans candidate Francois Fillon, who has been charged over payments to his wife and two of his children for suspected fake jobs as parliamentary assistants.

"The Assembly needs deputies who are genuinely opposed to the political catastrophe Emmanuel Macron is preparing for us", Le Pen said, accusing the president of wanting to "lay waste" to the country's labour code and allow mass immigration.

Rating agency S&P Global Ratings said on Monday it was likely to raise its growth outlook for France and the euro zone now that Macron looks poised to win a huge majority.

The Socialist party will win only 30 seats, with the party's presidential candidate Benoit Hamon already eliminated.

Elsewhere, German Chancellor Angela Merkel - who, like Macron, has a pro-EU stance - congratulated him on the "great success" of his party.

But his La France Insoumise took only 11 per cent, according to Kantar Public-onepoint, which forecast 13 to 23 seats for it and the Communist Party combined.

Far-right leader Marine Le Pen put on a courageous face in front of the cameras on election night and trumpeted her own first-place score in the northern constituency she is vying to represent.

Mr Macron's Republic on the March!

The final results of Sunday's first round of voting show that Macron's Republique en Marche party has won about 32.32 percent of the seats.

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Videos uploaded to YouTube using the new format will be viewable on screens and in headsets where the YouTube VR app is available. What is more, the price of the VR180 cameras are expected to be roughly the same price of a point-and-shoot camera.

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Angry residents staged a sit-in outside the office of the regional administrator to protest the violence and lack of security. On March 31, a auto bomb blast near an Imambargah of Shia Muslims killed 23 people and injured 70 others in Parachinar.

The poll delivered a further crushing blow to the Socialist and conservative parties that had alternated in power for decades until Macron's election in May blew apart the left-right divide.

French government junior minister Mounir Mahjoubi said voters want to give a large majority to the new president following partial results showing his new centrist party is clearly leading the first round of France's parliamentary elections.

Record-low turnout, however, took some shine off the achievement.

Ms Le Pen's National Front is predicted to win between one and five seats.

But the weaker turnout, if borne out in the afternoon, would narrow the second-round field, because candidates need the support of 12.5 percent of registered voters to qualify.

Ifop pollster Frederic Dabi said a virtual monopoly on power would up the ante for Macron.

Mahjoubi himself is running for a seat in Paris as a candidate with Macron's Republic on the Move party.

The party's leader Jean-Christophe Cambadélis failed to progress to the second round of voting for the Paris seat he has held for 20 years.

It would be a remarkable achievement for Macron, who won the presidency on May 7, by being a pro-European centrist, is hoping to carry out far-reaching reforms to overhaul the country's political system and economy.

The Republicans and their allies fared better, but with just shy of 22 percent of the vote, they were a distant second to Macron's.

On the diplomatic front, Macron did not lose to U.S. President Donald Trump when they postured to shake hands together at the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation summit held in Brussels late May.